{"id":31649,"date":"2023-06-29T10:58:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T10:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam"},"modified":"2023-06-29T11:14:25","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T11:14:25","slug":"victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam","title":{"rendered":"Victims lose \u20ac3.5m in child abuse extortion scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Mauritius. <\/strong><\/span>Police in France and Belgium say they have arrested 19 members of gangs who sent people fake court summonses that accused them of viewing images of children being sexually abused.<\/p>\n<p>People who received the messages were threatened with prosecution and tricked into paying thousands of dollars in supposed fines. Police say the scam had been going for more than two years, with at least \u20ac3.5m extorted.<\/p>\n<p>At least one victim killed himself. The man had been stung by the scam on two occasions, first being made to pay 5,978 euros, then another 7,480 euros.<\/p>\n<p>Colonel Thomas Andreu, head of one of the special French police units, said the sums extracted from victims were often larger, in some cases as much as 200,000 euros.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe thought that the fraud was being run by one central structure,\u201d said Col Andreu.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, it turned out to be several little teams which were not linked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201d Eighteen people were arrested in France on Monday and one in Belgium. All were aged between 20 and 50.<\/p>\n<p>All but three suspects were ordered to appear in court on fraud charges. The Paris prosecutor\u2019s office opened an investigation after the scam began at the start of 2021.<\/p>\n<p>By June of the following year they had received 400 complaints relating to it. Authorities are still trying to understand how many people were affected and believe that six others who were targeted may also have killed themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Christophe Durand of the French OCLCTIC anti-cybercrime unit said the \u201cvictims had suffered real distress\u201d. The scammers spent some of the money they extorted in France, though the majority of it was sent to the Ivory Coast and other African countries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\">Mauritius<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Mauritius. Police in France and Belgium say they have arrested 19 members of gangs who sent people fake court summonses that accused them of viewing images of children being sexually abused. People who received the messages were threatened with prosecution and tricked into paying thousands of dollars in supposed fines. Police say the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":31647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[233,245,241,320],"class_list":["post-31649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mauritius","tag-mauritius","tag-police"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Victims lose \u20ac3.5m in child abuse extortion scam - Mauritius<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Police in France and Belgium say they have arrested 19 members of gangs who sent people fake court summonses that accuse ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Victims lose \u20ac3.5m in child abuse extortion scam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Police in France and Belgium say they have arrested 19 members of gangs who sent people fake court summonses that accuse ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mauritius\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-06-29T10:58:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-06-29T11:14:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/sites\/61\/2023\/06\/sm_1688020888.385724.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"540\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Victims lose \u20ac3.5m in child abuse extortion scam\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-06-29T10:58:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-29T11:14:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam\"},\"wordCount\":292,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/sites\/61\/2023\/06\/sm_1688020888.385724.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mauritius\",\"Mauritius\",\"Police\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/victims-lose-e3-5m-in-child-abuse-extortion-scam\",\"name\":\"Victims lose \u20ac3.5m in child abuse extortion scam - 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